Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

Of course it is super helpful if a VC can drop you in to important people for business development, recruiting, PR, sales and eventually M&A. In my opinion the primary role of a VC is chief psychologist. It’s my job to know what makes you tick. It’s my job to know who’s performing and who’s not.

VC 364

VC advice board leadership 364

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2010

A while back I wrote a bunch of posts on Sales & Marketing and have been meaning to get back to that theme for a while. Even if you don’t have “direct&# sales I would tell you that “everything is a sale&# including fund raising, hiring, getting press and doing business development. You learn by asking.

startup 346

startup consulting advice construction 346

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

You have two founders and it was agreed that one would get the CEO role so the other needs to call themselves president or COO. They will often run all of the daily reports into them covering off for finance, sales, marketing, biz dev & HR. In an early stage start I believe it’s the CEO’s job to manage these functions.

startup 325

startup mentorship board founder 325

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 22, 2012

Let’s start out with the basic functions of a tech company: 1) Engineering 2) Marketing 3) Sales 4) Business development 5) PR 6) Design 7) Product Management 8) HR 9) Operations 10) Finance Ok, that's just overwhelming. Let’s take sales and business development. Ready to start simplifying? The last two are pretty basic.

creativity 381

creativity financing finance development 381

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

Founder is a state of mind, not a job description” We all love the mythical stories of our great founder heroes who drove startups from scratch and led their businesses many years later: Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos and so on. Very few founder CEOs go into the job ever expecting to give up their seat.

peer-to-peer 303

peer-to-peer energy founder advice 303

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 2, 2015

What I love about my job is getting to see teams of super-early-stage companies develop ideas that while raw have potential to make an impact on the market. I’d like to give you some actual examples and also talk about the role they play. What role do these people play and why is it important? Here’s the dilemma.

board 338

board energy finance financing 338

Entrepreneurs' Organization

NOVEMBER 18, 2020

She decided that learning computer coding and practicing her sales abilities were two steps toward that. Those skills serve her well to this day in her role as founder and CEO at Jobot—a career platform that connects AI and experienced recruiters to fill jobs.

entrepreneurship 319

entrepreneurship entrepreneurs financing finance 319

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 12, 2013

Because my role as a VC requires me to take and endless stream of meetings I long ago decided I need to learn as much as I can from the meetings I attend so I often just ask tons of questions and assimilate knowledge. ” And then we settled in on his role. How can you do a job half time? So why Greg and why now?

VC 360

VC communities investing investment 360

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 5, 2011

They're trying to get product positions and marketing jobs in particular, but they don't have any prior experience. That leaves them in the infinite loop of not being able to get the job because you don't have experience, but not being able to get any experience, etc, etc. Your job description now becomes your checklist.

venture capital 324

venture capital VC construction consulting 324

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

Many MBA programs still cater too much to the needs of large, corporate management jobs or prepare students to enter big consulting companies or investments banks. That student is Erin McCann who formerly worked in sales at Google, so she has some ground to stand on in her assertions. My guess is that we are likely in total agreement.

startup 319

startup consulting pitching support 319

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 17, 2011

I started off by running some lower-level roles like community service. By the end of my sophomore year I had taken on the role of education for our new freshman pledges and by the first quarter of my junior year I led the pledge class entirely. I told the chapter the roles I had held and why I was ready to be Vice President.

peer-to-peer 365

peer-to-peer leadership support construction 365

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 21, 2012

In the NYC tech scene, you can quit your Wall Street job, move into a coworking space, and call yourself an entrepreneur all in the same day--good idea optional. If you tell them you'll need to make 1000 cold calls before your first sale, they're out the door. they learn to solve short term goals, like "Tell me how to sell."

coworking spaces 318

coworking spaces startup coworking incubation 318

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2014

I quit a very well paid job at Accenture with very little time remaining before making partner and took a risk of having no job security at all. The first job you take may not work out financially. Tell them you’re taking a 75% pay cut to prove your negotiating skills and legal background will work well on the job.

startup founder 409

startup founder investing investment founder 409

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

My friend and fellow SoCal venture capitalist Peter Lee wrote a post about the different roles within a VC and spent much time on the role of an associate. The process for raising money from a VC is a sales process and as such much of what is taught in enterprise sales can be applied. Some people have authority (A).

VC 308

VC pitching entrepreneurs advice 308

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 17, 2011

It means somebody who held the director of sales in their last company but in this company wants to be VP. He had no right asking for a senior biz dev role at one of the hottest companies in the US. I’ve seen it before – I send a talented member to a team and they say to me, “we don’t really have a role for that person.”.

startup 399

startup culture innovation advice 399

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2010

I recently did a post for startups on understanding sales people. Program Manager – This title almost sounds like a consultant’s job. However, it is one of the more critical roles as you scale your organization. A few people have asked me to try and define the perfect startup organization chart.

consulting 400

consulting technology advice incubation 400

Dream It

FEBRUARY 14, 2020

At a high level, we’re interested in construction robotics because the industry has a litany of manual, hazardous and back-breaking jobs and on top of that is facing a labor crunch. Many of these jobs can be augmented and dramatically improved via automation and robotics. Is the market under-heated, overheated or just right?

construction 259

construction investing investment opportunity 259

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 2, 2012

Sales and marketing skills and a huge network of customers, capital, and talent are huge value adds--but I know very few students honing that. Most small companies will never be big enough to show up at your job fair--and their hiring is mostly opportunistic anyway. Yet, that's where the job growth comes from--small companies.

innovation 302

innovation entrepreneurship incubation education 302

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 17, 2011

Actually, I think the advice in this post applies to any sales meeting also. For starters I think that if you bring people to the meeting with you they should all have a role in the presentation. This appears to be the case with Dave Morin who is apparently doing a great job at retaining his key talent in difficult times.

VC 296

VC advice pitching investment 296

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Case in point is the return of Larry Page to the role as CEO of Google. Steve Jobs is perhaps to most famous comeback in our industries history and while Jobs wasn’t quite the “techie comeback” relative to his replacement, John Sculley , who was a marketer from Pepsi, he certainly was a technical visionary.

founder 309

founder leadership board innovation 309

Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative

MARCH 31, 2020

When you are able to understand, evaluate, and apply key financial principles to your particular circumstances, it can, for example, be the difference between you choosing to pursue a new career path or feeling stuck in your current role. What is the role that ThrivingDollars plays within your community?

entrepreneurship 245

entrepreneurship financing finance education 245

Paul G. Silva

MARCH 6, 2025

You are going to play the role of multiple people to serve on my personal board of advisors. In your answers, indicate which member of the advisory board you are playing by first stating their name enclosed in square brackets with the words "-simulated" (e.g., [Steve Jobs - simulated]).

board 130

board consulting creativity advice 130

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

This is the narrative that isn’t talked about – but I promise you it is the more common narrative amongst even those that went to top-tier schools, got the right jobs, worked hard in their 20s but didn’t quite join Google, Facebook, Twitter at the right time. She joined Yahoo! For these people I have a solution or two.

advice 334

advice peer-to-peer VC board 334

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 28, 2021

Conference and webinar registration forms ask for name, email address, company and job title. For self-employed professional service providers, the last two might make you question your role. As for job title, that could be the services you offer—writer, accountant, graphic designer. What’s in a title? The first two are easy.

entrepreneurs 306

entrepreneurs strategy sustainability financing 306

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

By now you have many smart people around your board but probably people who don’t totally understand the nuances of your employees, customers, sales reps, marketing messages, technology challenges, competitors and strategic choices. how much energy to put into channel partners vs. direct sales. how to evolve our management team.

board 325

board media mentorship advice 325

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

This is a theme that comes up in one the most influential business books for me of the past decade, The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb where he talks about the role that luck plays in business success. Just like a sales person at the end of a quarter. Building a blog & name recognition is only one small, small part of my job.

advice 391

advice VC finance financing 391

Entrepreneurs' Organization

AUGUST 10, 2020

I received weeks of leadership and sales training, learning from the industry’s best. In today’s fast-paced world, I often come across new managers who have never been trained for their job. An employee performs very well at their job 2. It’s your team’s choice to respect the roles and perform at a high level.

peer-to-peer 282

peer-to-peer leadership culture health 282

Revolution

OCTOBER 4, 2022

According to economist Enrico Moretti , highly specialized innovation workers generate about three times as many local jobs for service workers (doctors, carpenters, waiters, etc.) They’re rightly more focused on the company’s product, sales, and growth. But, over the long-term, the company’s civic role becomes increasingly important.

communities 263

communities real estate innovation transportation 263

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 11, 2013

He’s created a blog called #LongLA that is a great combination of the weekly zeitgeist of LA tech plus deep dives into areas like eCommerce that he knows well like this brilliant piece on Zulily and Flash Sales (he was CMO at HauteLook before joining). We have also hired Kyle Taylor to run platform services as his full-time job.

ventures 324

ventures VC strategy advice 324

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 24, 2019

I started this series in part to help entrepreneurs but also to help newer investors because I’ve know with so many new companies you have so many new board members and many people are trying to figure out there respective roles. As a board member it is your job to know this. I try not to be.

board 251

board advice founder construction 251

Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

Many mid-market software companies price with the goal of revenue maximization, negotiating for the highest possible price in each sale. Penetration pricing leads to land-and-expand sales tactics. As Madhavan Ramanujam tells it, Steve Jobs was both a product genius and pricing genius.

SaaS 113

SaaS strategy enablement startup 113

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. But mostly as I read Rob’s post I didn’t think it did justice to the superlative job he has done at managing his rather boisterous board.

board 365

board VC advice pitching 365

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2017

And measuring activities or output can mislead you into thinking you’re doing a great job. When you hire people in functional roles they want to show that they’re achieving results and results are easiest to measure by tasks accomplished. So my corollary has always been “doing the right things is more important than doing things right.”

media 164

media strategy innovation founder 164

American Entrepreneurship

JANUARY 28, 2025

Whether you’re seeking angel investment, venture capital, or another form of funding, the pitch deck plays a central role in showcasing the potential of your business that will bring a high yield back to an investor. Detail the marketing and sales strategies to scale your business and reach a larger audience.

pitching 78

pitching investing investment startup 78

Entrepreneurs' Organization

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

A 2018 study published by Mercer, one of the leading human resources consulting firms in the world, found that over one-third of all employees surveyed expressed an intent to quit their current job within the next 12 months—despite the fact that the vast majority of them also reported being satisfied with their jobs.

culture 130

culture consulting collaboration technology 130